Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them. Geesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening, Good fellow, Capo killer thief, a man so
Speaker 2: diabolically evil that he ordered his eldest son to murder
Speaker 2: his closest associate and his youngest son to murder his
Speaker 2: best friend. When Greg Scarpa was in his early twenties,
Speaker 2: he became a good fellow the Prafacci family by swearing
Speaker 2: a blood oath to the mafia, at the time, the
Speaker 2: country's largest organized crime syndicate, and for twenty five years
Speaker 2: he betrayed that oath and the men closest to him.
Speaker 2: By acting as a paid informant for the FBI. He
Speaker 2: fed America's premier law enforcement agency a steady stream of
Speaker 2: self serving information, accusing the men who trusted him with
Speaker 2: their lives of every crime he was himself committing. During
Speaker 2: those twenty five years of treachery, Scarpa was a one
Speaker 2: man crime wave who spent only thirty days behind bars
Speaker 2: thanks to his status as the FBI's ultimate mafia insider,
Speaker 2: his standing as a prized informant, freedom to engage in
Speaker 2: mayhem and murder, knowing he had a virtual license to kill.
Speaker 2: Greg SCARPA Legendary Evil is a deep dive that provides
Speaker 2: fresh insight into scarp malignant personality. Dyer peels back the
Speaker 2: layers of myth and misdirection to paint as complete and
Speaker 2: accurate a picture as possible of a man who murdered
Speaker 2: his enemies and betrayed his friends, of a bigamist who
Speaker 2: loved only money, of a feared and reviled man whose
Speaker 2: destructive appetites knew no bounds. The book that we're featuring
Speaker 2: this evening is Greg SCARPA Legendary Evil, The Many Faces
Speaker 2: of a Mafia Killer, with my special guest author Jonathan Dyer.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 2: this interview. Jonathan P.
Speaker 3: Dyer, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Dan, thank you very much. First off, tell us this
Speaker 2: very interesting story, the origins of this book. How you
Speaker 2: came to write this book, Greg SCARPA Legendary Evil.
Speaker 3: Sure, my writing partner Joe Pletto, and I were working
Speaker 3: on some spec scripts based off of Larry Masa's book
Speaker 3: The Life, and as we did that, Craig Scarpa was
Speaker 3: obviously a central character, and writing the scripts we got
Speaker 3: more and more into factors besides Larry Masa that were
Speaker 3: crucial to that story. And at one point Joe suggested
Speaker 3: that I write a biography to Craig Scarpen and I
Speaker 3: kind of pushed back. I hadn't written anything of book
Speaker 3: length nonfiction. I've written, you know, graduate school stuff. I'd
Speaker 3: written some blog entries about baseball, but nothing book length
Speaker 3: in terms of nonfiction. And Joe kept pushing a little,
Speaker 3: pretty pretty gently, but so finally I said, you know,
Speaker 3: I'll take a shot at it. I'll give it, give
Speaker 3: it a world two plus years of research and writing.
Speaker 3: After deciding to go ahead and do that, actually closer
Speaker 3: to three years, i'd kind of put the project aside.
Speaker 3: I had a conversation with another friend of mine, Pete Fairley,
Speaker 3: and Pete was really very kind and persuasive, saying, you
Speaker 3: know you should do this, don't give up, keep going,
Speaker 3: and gave me a little pep talk really when I
Speaker 3: needed it. And so at that point, I was in
Speaker 3: contact with Wild Blue Press and they were kind enough
Speaker 3: to pick up the book. And that's really how the
Speaker 3: book came about.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about you call it the beginning lawren Zaga
Speaker 2: to Brooklyn. This is Greg scarp of Senior's father's journey
Speaker 2: from Northeast Italy, a small town, to America's biggest city.
Speaker 2: And you talked about that by nineteen ninety there was
Speaker 2: more Italians that lived in New York City than in Italy,
Speaker 2: except for the exception of the city of Rome. To
Speaker 2: talk about Scarpa's early life, Greg Scarpa's early life, his
Speaker 2: father Salvatore tell us about their early life in New York.
Speaker 3: Sure, they came right around the time of the First
Speaker 3: World War, and there was this huge attime diaspora to
Speaker 3: New York, as you point out, and both Scarpus's father
Speaker 3: and mother emigrated to New York, and they were both
Speaker 3: pretty young, and they were both very poor. They married
Speaker 3: in New York and had five children, fourth of which
Speaker 3: was Greg Scarpa. He had three older sisters and one
Speaker 3: younger brother. And the documents from the Census Bureau from
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty nineteen forty really indicate just how poor the
Speaker 3: Scarpa family was. They were making virtually no money, just
Speaker 3: a little bit here and there. And in fact, Greg
Speaker 3: Scarpa told his daughter Linda about going around Pauling Cole
Speaker 3: in Brooklyn in New York when he was about eight
Speaker 3: years old, to try to make a few bucks with
Speaker 3: his dad. And those are the circumstances that Scarpa grew
Speaker 3: up and very poor, a member of a meteor moderately
Speaker 3: large Italian immigrant family in a largely Italian immigrant neighborhood.
Speaker 3: Scarper went to high school, he finished high school, and
Speaker 3: at the time that he finished high school, right around
Speaker 3: the mid forties, the United States was demobilizing and he
Speaker 3: had to compete for employment with literally millions of other
Speaker 3: young men coming back from being in the service during
Speaker 3: World War Two.
Speaker 2: You say that he joined the Merchant Marines, but right
Speaker 2: after that he was being recruited by Charlie Decige los
Speaker 2: Ario of the Profacci family, one of the five mafia
Speaker 2: families in New York City. A virtual prerequisite from membership, though,
Speaker 2: you had to be a Sicilian. Tell us how he
Speaker 2: gets to be involved in the Pafacci family despite not
Speaker 2: being Sicilian.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dan, that was as you point out after a
Speaker 3: brief service in the Merchant Marine, which his son Gregory Jr.
Speaker 3: Told me about, Scarpa was back in Brooklyn and Tallagero
Speaker 3: of Cicero or the Cicero I've heard it Browns both ways. Anyway,
Speaker 3: Charlie decide kind of took him under his arm there
Speaker 3: in their neighborhood in Brooklyn, and the Profaci family, unlike
Speaker 3: the other four families of the New York Mafia, did
Speaker 3: not have this requirement that you'd be from Sicily or
Speaker 3: be Sicilian in order to join, and that was sort
Speaker 3: of a screening, vetting idea that the other families had
Speaker 3: that you would really understand what this mafia organization Coosonostra
Speaker 3: was all about if you were from Sicily. But again
Speaker 3: the Prafacci family was not concerned with that, which is
Speaker 3: for Scarpa's you know, you want to call it good
Speaker 3: fortune at the time was important for him because he
Speaker 3: wasn't Cecilican, so the Cistero tick him under his wing,
Speaker 3: and Scarpa by the early nineteen fifties earned his button
Speaker 3: as a good fellow, which meant he was actually a member.
Speaker 3: At first, he was an associate, as people that are
Speaker 3: originally working with other mafia members are but then he
Speaker 3: earned his button as a good fellow. In the early
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties, you.
Speaker 2: Talk about that he was married to Connie Farace or
Speaker 2: Connie Forrest as she went by, and soon had a
Speaker 2: daughter named Deborah and then later a son named Gregory Junior.
Speaker 3: Greg and Connie met in the late nineteen forties and
Speaker 3: got married and they started a family, just like lots
Speaker 3: of people did during those baby boom years, and their
Speaker 3: four children, one of those was Gregory Junior, and Gregory
Speaker 3: Junior and the other members of the Scarpett family eventually
Speaker 3: moved to Staten Island. Greig was doing well enough to
Speaker 3: tell a Connie pick out a house, anyhouse you like,
Speaker 3: and you can fix it up exactly the way you want.
Speaker 3: So the family moved out of Brooklyn into Staten Island,
Speaker 3: and Gregory talks about those years is being really good
Speaker 3: family years. They had a pool, they had lots of
Speaker 3: parties at their house. They enjoyed where they were living.
Speaker 3: As Gregory was growing up, and at the same time, Craig,
Speaker 3: of course, was increasing his profile in the Profacci family
Speaker 3: and eventually became a coppo. By the early nineteen sixties
Speaker 3: in the profaction family. So there's this dual nature of
Speaker 3: Scarpa's life, on the one hand, family man and on
Speaker 3: the other hand, mafia family man. And that's proceeding through
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties and into the early nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: You talk about in the late fifties, the FBI already
Speaker 2: had regional offices gathering information on mobsters in their territories
Speaker 2: and reporting regularly to Washington. But the FBI, you right,
Speaker 2: made little progress during the fifties to understand the structure
Speaker 2: and workings of organized crime. You talk about Gregory Scarpa's
Speaker 2: criminal career ever evolving, and then an opportunity for the
Speaker 2: FBI when they contact Gregory Scarpa and want some information
Speaker 2: from what is the what are they offering, and how
Speaker 2: do they approach greg Ley Scarpat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just backing up a little, You're absolutely right about
Speaker 3: the FBI not really having a clear picture of what
Speaker 3: was going on with organized crime. A lot of that
Speaker 3: had to do with jayger Hoover's own vision that there
Speaker 3: was no organized prime in the United States. And once
Speaker 3: John Kennedy became president and his brother Bobby Kennedy became
Speaker 3: the Attorney General. That changed quickly. John Kennedy, as I
Speaker 3: note in the book, during one of his speeches on
Speaker 3: the campaign trail in nineteen sixty, noted that there was
Speaker 3: organized crime in the United States and it was growing.
Speaker 3: A number of initiatives start in the FBI to try
Speaker 3: to figure out what this organization, the mafia, is all about,
Speaker 3: and so agents were tasked with trying to get informants
Speaker 3: within the excuse me, within the mafia to provide them
Speaker 3: with information. The FBI in New York, in the New
Speaker 3: York Office, was looking for Greig Scar his brother Sal
Speaker 3: in connection with a suspected hijacking. They believe Sal was
Speaker 3: involved and they couldn't find him. So they knew that
Speaker 3: Craig was his brother from some older arrest records that
Speaker 3: they had, and they approached Greg and asked them to
Speaker 3: help them find Sal, and Craig, apparently very politely in
Speaker 3: exchanges that were completely civil, said I'm not going to
Speaker 3: help you. I can't do it. And they pushed for
Speaker 3: a little while trying to get him to help, and
Speaker 3: finally he said, look, fellas, I'm going to get killed
Speaker 3: if people see me talking to you, So you've got
Speaker 3: to just leave me alone. And it seemed like at
Speaker 3: that point that that was it. FBI and Greg Scarpa
Speaker 3: were not going to have any relationship. But Scarpa had
Speaker 3: a change of heart and he approached the FBI and said, essentially,
Speaker 3: what do you want to know?
Speaker 2: It's very interesting that the FBI had an issue a
Speaker 2: program almost at the same time called the Top Echelon
Speaker 2: Criminal Informant Program or TECHI as its short form designated,
Speaker 2: and they wanted and were interested in gaining information. So
Speaker 2: in that regard, what's Greg Scarpa rule with the FBI.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that program, as I read the FBI documents, grew
Speaker 3: out of what was originally called a top hoodlum program.
Speaker 3: The TECI program was a little more sophisticated, and again
Speaker 3: the FBI was trying to get out of the darkness
Speaker 3: that they existed in with respect to information about the mafia.
Speaker 3: And once Greg Scarpa decided that he was going to
Speaker 3: cooperate with the FBI, not so much to half his
Speaker 3: brother arrested, but to provide the FBI with the information
Speaker 3: that they were interested in about bigger picture FBI mafia activity.
Speaker 3: Once he decided to go ahead and do that, the
Speaker 3: amount of information that he provided very quickly was just enormous.
Speaker 3: He provided information about the history of the mafia, the
Speaker 3: history of the mafia in the United States. He provided
Speaker 3: information about their ceremonies, about their rules and regulations, about
Speaker 3: their dues and don'ts I mean. He provided information about
Speaker 3: their structure, about their organizational structure, what a papo was,
Speaker 3: what a boss was, what the boss of bosses, who
Speaker 3: that was. He provided them with a wealth of information
Speaker 3: that was, it appears from the documents, was really brand
Speaker 3: new to the FBI. They were very excited about this
Speaker 3: new contact, Greg Scarpa, who was providing him with them
Speaker 3: with all this information. From from Scarpu's point of view,
Speaker 3: it seems to me that scarp was after two things,
Speaker 3: and one was money, because the FBI was paying him
Speaker 3: for this information, and money was really the only thing
Speaker 3: that Greg Scarpa really loved in his life. And protection,
Speaker 3: protection from incarceration, from being arrested, from being tried, convicted,
Speaker 3: and incarcerated. So the two sides really had something that
Speaker 3: they specifically wanted and it paid off for both of them.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. What you haven't mentioned is that Gregory Scarpa
Speaker 2: said he was a coppo in the Profacci family, meaning
Speaker 2: the highest member, the boss in the Pafacci family. There
Speaker 2: was some dispute on that claim, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Sharp is self reporting to the FBI with regard to
Speaker 3: the structure the Profacci family, he included himself as a coppo.
Speaker 3: And what we find later is that Scarpa, when Joe
Speaker 3: Colombo became the boss of the Prafacci family, Carpo was
Speaker 3: no longer a coppo. When Prafaci died in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 3: the heads of the other families in New York were
Speaker 3: really interested in having some younger leadership in at the
Speaker 3: head of what became the Columbo family, and Joe Colombo
Speaker 3: was younger for a boss at the time, and as
Speaker 3: I recall, in his mid forties. And Joe Colombo had
Speaker 3: that same attitude that he was going to try to
Speaker 3: inject youthfulness into the coppo structure of the Colombo family.
Speaker 3: And so Scarpa fully appoint expected to be appointed a
Speaker 3: coppo under Joe Colombo. But it didn't happen. And if
Speaker 3: it had happened, at least my reading of the documents
Speaker 3: is that it would have been a reappointment since he
Speaker 3: had been a coppo and self reported as a coppo
Speaker 3: under the Profacci family. What happened instead was, according to
Speaker 3: Gregory Junior, greg Senior became part of this very close
Speaker 3: circle of Colombo advisors, Colombo friends, just this inner circle
Speaker 3: for Joe Colombo. And again according to Gregory, as a
Speaker 3: result of that, he had more power in the family
Speaker 3: than he would have had as a coppo with respect
Speaker 3: to his closeness to Joe Colombo. And so we don't
Speaker 3: see all of these years that he's operating in the
Speaker 3: Columbo family. We don't see greg as a coppo, but
Speaker 3: as a good fellow.
Speaker 2: You take us to nineteen sixty two and back to
Speaker 2: greg Scarpus's personal life. He began to court a teen
Speaker 2: despite being married a team from Brooklyn, Linda Diana, who
Speaker 2: was seventeen years old and he was thirty four at
Speaker 2: the time. She became eventually his mistress or as they
Speaker 2: referred to him as Gumar, and this relationship, as you write,
Speaker 2: lasted until his death. They lived together for thirty years
Speaker 2: and had two children, and for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 2: husband and wife. Tell us a little bit about more
Speaker 2: about this relationship while he is married.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he never divorced Connie. He he bought a horse
Speaker 3: farm for her in Lakewood, New Jersey and moved her
Speaker 3: out there. And this was after he had started having
Speaker 3: an affair with Linda Diana later Linda Schiro and the
Speaker 3: good Fellow ethic, if you want to call it, that
Speaker 3: almost required a powerful mafia figure to have a gumar
Speaker 3: a mistress, so this was not at all unusual, especially
Speaker 3: even though he was married. So that relationship began, as
Speaker 3: you point out, in the early nineteen sixties, when Scarpa
Speaker 3: was about twice Linda Sharra's age. She was actually a
Speaker 3: minor at the time, and Linda Schiro Linda Diana at
Speaker 3: the time was already very familiar with the mob. She
Speaker 3: lived in Brooklyn. She'd been around gangsters really from a
Speaker 3: very young age. Her her grandmother ran numbers for the
Speaker 3: mob in Brooklyn, and she dated a mobster for a
Speaker 3: while before she had met Greg scarp In fact, she
Speaker 3: was dating him while she first became involved with Greg Scarpa.
Speaker 3: So she was very familiar with the mob life and
Speaker 3: as she said many times quite frankly, when people asked
Speaker 3: her if she was afraid of Greg Scarpa if she
Speaker 3: was concerned about her own safety. She said, look, I
Speaker 3: admired the guys. I was thrilled by it. I wasn't
Speaker 3: afraid at all. And that, as you point out, that
Speaker 3: relationship with Linda Schirow eventually blossomed into Greg and Linda
Speaker 3: getting a place together and then Linda having two children
Speaker 3: by Greg Scarpa, a son and a daughter in reverse order.
Speaker 3: That the daughter was first and that was Linda Little
Speaker 3: Linda as the calder, and then Joy Scarper was a
Speaker 3: couple of years later, all the while Scarpa maintained his marriage.
Speaker 2: Very very interesting though, that Linda Diana has a plan,
Speaker 2: has a plan with Gregory Scarpa and to use to
Speaker 2: duke to fool Charlie Shiro tell us about this plan
Speaker 2: to have children, and Charlie Shiro not to be the wiser.
Speaker 3: Yeah. When Linda, well, for most of her life, I
Speaker 3: suppose she considers herself a devout Catholic and she didn't
Speaker 3: want to have children out of wedlock, and scarp was
Speaker 3: already married, so she didn't feel that she could have
Speaker 3: children with him, and her children could be baptized in
Speaker 3: the Catholic Church. So what she came up with was
Speaker 3: the scheme to get married to this guy, Charlie, and
Speaker 3: then still have Scarpa's children, but try to pretend and
Speaker 3: deceive Charlie that they were his, and they were married,
Speaker 3: the children could be baptized and Linda would have be
Speaker 3: able to fulfill those goals of having children by Greg
Speaker 3: Scarpa and the children being baptized in the Catholic church.
Speaker 3: Charlie eventually caught on, particularly when a caregiver made a
Speaker 3: comment about how much Joey looked like Greg Scarpa. Charlie
Speaker 3: eventually caught on, and there was a divorce and Linda
Speaker 3: and Greg moved in together permanently shortly after that. Just
Speaker 3: you know, when Linda first brought this idea, the scheme
Speaker 3: to Greg, he thought it was nuts. He just said
Speaker 3: that's crazy. But eventually he said, okay, let's go ahead
Speaker 3: and do that, and that's exactly what they did.
Speaker 2: You're right that the Joe Prafacci, head of the Prafacci family,
Speaker 2: dies in June nineteen sixty two at sixty four years old.
Speaker 2: Scarpa tells his handlers that the First Columbo War was
Speaker 2: in full swing Pifacci Gallo feud otherwise that we be call.
Speaker 3: Right the Gallow brothers, there are three of them. Larry
Speaker 3: Gallow was kind of the brains did outfit, and then
Speaker 3: Joey was a little more unhinged, and then there was
Speaker 3: Albert kid Blast Gallo, and the three Gallo brothers that
Speaker 3: had been brought into the Prafacci family during the nineteen
Speaker 3: fifties felt that they weren't getting the lucrative assignments, the
Speaker 3: lucrative jobs, a lucrative posts that they felt they were
Speaker 3: entitled to, and so there was a lot of grumbling
Speaker 3: about that. And then the death of joe Prafacci was
Speaker 3: an opportunity for a lot of people to try to
Speaker 3: to maneuver their way into a more powerful position in
Speaker 3: the Columbo family, and that was one of the goals
Speaker 3: of the Gallows as well. And at one point Carman
Speaker 3: Persico attempted to kill Larry Gallo by strangling him, and
Speaker 3: the attempted murder was interrupted. Larry survived, but the bad
Speaker 3: blood between Carmen Persico, who became an important member in
Speaker 3: the Colombo family and actually the Columbo family in general,
Speaker 3: continued passed Profacci's death and into the succession of cential
Speaker 3: succession by Joe Columbo as the boss of the family.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Greg Scarpa as a killer while at
Speaker 2: the same time he has various handlers, or at least
Speaker 2: he has two handlers. Special agent that will be Lynn
Speaker 2: de Vecchio will be a very important figure in this story,
Speaker 2: but she is not his first handler. So let's talk
Speaker 2: about Greg Scarpa as a killer and while at the
Speaker 2: same time, what information is he giving the FBI.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't have a lot of hard data on
Speaker 3: Scarpa's killings during the nineteen fifties and the early nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: We do have some testimony from Linda Charro about Barpa
Speaker 3: killing fairly capriciously a guy he was supposed to be
Speaker 3: buying some stamps from, and then Scarpa met him in
Speaker 3: a car Linda Hurd gunshots, and then Scarpa came back
Speaker 3: with both the money and the stamps or maybe it
Speaker 3: was coins. I don't recall off the top of my head, Dan,
Speaker 3: But at any rate, because as I point out in
Speaker 3: the book, these guys are living in a world of secrecy.
Speaker 3: They're not They don't have a bunch of press following
Speaker 3: them around we don't have a whole lot of a
Speaker 3: clear idea what scarp was up to in terms of murders.
Speaker 3: We do know that Linda has said that when they
Speaker 3: first met Scarpid said that he had already killed twenty
Speaker 3: plus people, And we don't know if that's Scarpa trying
Speaker 3: to brag. We don't know if it's absolutely true, and
Speaker 3: if it is, we don't know who those victims are.
Speaker 3: But eventually, as a result of Scarpa being involved with
Speaker 3: the FBI, we get a clearer picture of the murders
Speaker 3: that Scarpa was involved in during the sixties, seventies, and
Speaker 3: eighties and into the nineties. And in fact, one of
Speaker 3: the theories that I have in the book is that
Speaker 3: when Scarpa was first dropped by the FBI in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five, and its first handler was Anthony Veolano, it's
Speaker 3: my view that another informant told the FBI that of
Speaker 3: a murder that scarp had been involved in in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty four that didn't come to light to the FBI
Speaker 3: till nineteen seventy five, and that's why scarp was dropped
Speaker 3: by the FBI as an informant. They had told him
Speaker 3: during the crisis after Joe Perfacci died, that he was
Speaker 3: absolutely not to be involved in murder. He told the
Speaker 3: FBI that there was some there was some rumbling that
Speaker 3: he was going to be told to kill the potential
Speaker 3: successor to Perfaccio, this guy Maglioco. And when he told
Speaker 3: the FBI that, all kinds of alarm bells went off,
Speaker 3: both in New York and in Washington, and scarp was
Speaker 3: told in no uncertain terms he was not to be
Speaker 3: involved in murder, not to be involved in killing. That
Speaker 3: was a line he wasn't supposed to cross. As we know,
Speaker 3: he crossed it many times. And again it's my view
Speaker 3: that when the FBI found out in nineteen seventy five
Speaker 3: that had been involved, specifically alleged to be involved in
Speaker 3: a murder in nineteen sixty four, that that's when they
Speaker 3: dropped him the first time. So that's some of the
Speaker 3: sort of skeedgy detail we have on Scarpa's career as
Speaker 3: a killer up until about nineteen eighty, when we start
Speaker 3: getting a lot more.
Speaker 2: Let's not go into the various accounts of what Scarpug
Speaker 2: provided to the FBI regarding three very important historic events
Speaker 2: that occurred in Mississippi. Can you tell us about his involvement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, There's been a lot of speculation over the years,
Speaker 3: and scarp has sort of fueled some of that speculation
Speaker 3: by making a few things up. But there were three
Speaker 3: cases of that were very large in the civil rights movement,
Speaker 3: and the first was the murder of Medgar Evers. The
Speaker 3: second was the murder of the three civil rights workers
Speaker 3: who are trying to bridge Straffan Americans to vote, and
Speaker 3: the fourth was the murder of Vernon Dahmer in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty six. And my review of the documents, the FBI documents,
Speaker 3: the available testimony that I saw, has led me to
Speaker 3: conclude that Scarpa had no involvement in the Medgar Evers case. However,
Speaker 3: I think it's likely. I don't think it's a slam done,
Speaker 3: but I think it's likely based upon the statements that
Speaker 3: people have made over the years and the consistency of
Speaker 3: those statements, that Scarpa played a role in helping the
Speaker 3: FBI locate the bodies of the three civil rights workers
Speaker 3: that were murdered down in Mississippi. And part of that
Speaker 3: is that, or part of my conclusion is derived from
Speaker 3: the information that is in the FBI documents, and also,
Speaker 3: as I said, the sort of the consistent testimony of
Speaker 3: particularly Linda Sharrow over the years about that involvement. So
Speaker 3: I think it's likely he was involved in that. And Dan.
Speaker 3: The incredible thing there is that the FBI and the
Speaker 3: Department of Justice and the Johnson administration were under an
Speaker 3: enormous amount of pressure to find these guys. They were
Speaker 3: down there, they were working. It was the height of
Speaker 3: the civil rights era, and there was an enormous amount
Speaker 3: of tension and pressure. And the FBI was finding that
Speaker 3: their own strategies for finding these bodies or maybe even
Speaker 3: hopefully finding the guys alive, wasn't working and they needed
Speaker 3: outside help. And I think that the available evidence leads
Speaker 3: to a reasonable conclusion that scarp was likely to have
Speaker 3: helped them. And on the third matter, the Vernon Dahmer matter,
Speaker 3: I think the evidence is even more solid, but I
Speaker 3: still think it's like it's more probably than not that
Speaker 3: Scarpa helped them solve that murder too. Vernon Dahmer was
Speaker 3: an NAACP officer in Mississippi, very active in trying to
Speaker 3: register African Americans. He was an African American himself trying
Speaker 3: to register African Americans to vote. He had a store,
Speaker 3: he had a registration booth in that store, and eventually
Speaker 3: his house was attacked and burned, and during the burning
Speaker 3: of his house, these guys essentially laid siege upon him,
Speaker 3: Dahmer fought back. He fired back, but was eventually overcome
Speaker 3: by smoking inhalation and died shortly after that. The prosecution
Speaker 3: of one of the people that was involved in that
Speaker 3: is well documented in the state court records in Mississippi,
Speaker 3: including a twenty two page confession. And it's my conclusion
Speaker 3: that that confession came about as a result of pressure
Speaker 3: that's Scarpa placed upon that individual that we would probably
Speaker 3: today called enhance interrogation. And the confession itself stood up
Speaker 3: the documents indicating that there was payment to an informant,
Speaker 3: that informant would be killed if his identity were known.
Speaker 3: All of the and some other matters as well, but
Speaker 3: all those together led me to conclude that Scarpa was
Speaker 3: more probably than not involved and resolving the Vernon Dalmer
Speaker 3: death murder.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. There's also a very interesting case that became
Speaker 2: personal for Great Scarpa and really helped them the Regina
Speaker 2: Passes Crown Jewels case. Let's talk about something that contributed
Speaker 2: to his downfall was the phony IBM stock certificates scheme.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was, you know, the game that couldn't shoot straight,
Speaker 3: couldn't counterfeit straight. They came up with this cockamade scheme
Speaker 3: to falsify some stock certificates, and then they were going
Speaker 3: to sell the stock certificates at at an extreme discount,
Speaker 3: about ten percent, and whoever bought them could probably use
Speaker 3: them in any way they could, And part of the
Speaker 3: scheme was, well, maybe we can use these as collateral
Speaker 3: for property, collateral for a loan, and then of course
Speaker 3: the lending institution is going to be stuck with some
Speaker 3: phony paper and they'll have the money. So anyway, they
Speaker 3: went on this attempt to falsify these documents, and they
Speaker 3: had an enormous amount of difficulty trying to find somebody
Speaker 3: that could forge the documents. They had a tough time
Speaker 3: among themselves deciding who was going to pay for the
Speaker 3: forged documents, who was going to pay for the printing,
Speaker 3: who was going to pay the forger. Scarpa typically was
Speaker 3: unwilling to dish out money to try to pay the forgers.
Speaker 3: Scarpa did not like hatting out money, frankly like taking
Speaker 3: it in, and Joe Brewster was involved in this as well.
Speaker 3: Eventually they got rid of the phony certificate somebody bought them.
Speaker 3: They made their way down to Philadelphia, and a bunch
Speaker 3: of guys that were involved in trying to peddle them
Speaker 3: down there got caught and prosecuted. That that got back
Speaker 3: to the Newark office of the FBI, and they went
Speaker 3: after the guys that were in Brooklyn that were involved
Speaker 3: in this, and over a period of a couple of
Speaker 3: years their arrests. Scarpa, one of his responses to his
Speaker 3: own arrests was to threaten to tell in open court
Speaker 3: what he knew about the FBI and how it was
Speaker 3: using informants and what the FBI's on methods were. He
Speaker 3: apologized it was an error that he made there by
Speaker 3: making that threat. They eventually got a grand jury to
Speaker 3: return some indictments against these guys, and the upshot of
Speaker 3: it was that, for reasons unknown at least reasons unknown
Speaker 3: to me and not clear in the documents, that the
Speaker 3: charges were eventually dismissed against scarp and Brewster and really
Speaker 3: two years after the fact, and so that never went
Speaker 3: any further. Although some guys did either plead guilty or
Speaker 3: were found guilty, particularly the guys down at Philadelphia and
Speaker 3: went to prison for being involved in the scheme, and
Speaker 3: scarp it not so much.
Speaker 2: And that elicited some rumors that there was something amiss,
Speaker 2: didn't it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, the people within Scarpa's orbit
Speaker 3: certainly knew that he had been arrested and he and
Speaker 3: Bruce had both been arrested for this, and that there
Speaker 3: were legal proceedings that were going on. Then it just
Speaker 3: kind of disappears. And really as early as the nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two, Carlo Gambino had suspicions about Scarpa being an
Speaker 3: informant for the FBI, and he told his crew his
Speaker 3: guys stay away from Scarpay has a big mouth. You know.
Speaker 3: One of the amazing things about this story is that
Speaker 3: there are all these clues all the way along, and
Speaker 3: people tended to ignore them. They just thought, now, it's
Speaker 3: not possible. He can't be doing this. He's the FBI
Speaker 3: can't be using this guy. He's just too much of
Speaker 3: a mafia killer for the FBI to be involved with.
Speaker 3: Scarpa would never do that, etcetera, etcetera, and is one
Speaker 3: of his closest lieutenants for years. Larry Maza in retrospects
Speaker 3: that he could see the signs, but at the time
Speaker 3: he ignored them. And I think that was generally true
Speaker 3: among people that were in scarpa orbit. Not everybody, but mostly.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about some characters and some extraordinary events that
Speaker 2: happen regarding Greg Scarpa. Let's talk about Larry Masa and
Speaker 2: how Larry Masa comes to be in Grave Scarpa's orbit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an incredible story all in itself. And Scarpa's mistress,
Speaker 3: after having a couple of children, approached scarp and said, Hey,
Speaker 3: there's a young man that I'm interested in. He works
Speaker 3: at a local grocery store that I shop there, and
Speaker 3: I want to take them to bed. Without being too
Speaker 3: exact in terms of the conversation between scarp and Linda
Speaker 3: on that issue, scarp eventually said, yeah, whatever makes you happy.
Speaker 3: To Linda, So Larry Massa was the grocery clerk she
Speaker 3: was talking about, and she eventually fairly quickly seduced Masa.
Speaker 3: Maza had no idea who she was, no idea who
Speaker 3: her putative husband was or the man she was living
Speaker 3: with was, and eventually found out and greg Scarpa brought
Speaker 3: him into his orbit. Larry was kind of casting about,
Speaker 3: looking for something to do. He was probably going to be,
Speaker 3: or at least his plan was to become a fireman
Speaker 3: like his father had been. But there were some proceedings
Speaker 3: in New York that put a temporary halt on the
Speaker 3: hiring of firemen based upon the allegation that they were biased.
Speaker 3: The test for firemen were biased against women. Larry put
Speaker 3: that dream on hold. During that whole period, he was
Speaker 3: getting deeper and deeper with Linda, having this affair that
Speaker 3: Scarpa was completely aware of, and then Scarpa offered him
Speaker 3: a job, a legitimate job at first, and then eventually
Speaker 3: Maza became part of Scarper's crew, doing the kinds of
Speaker 3: things that the members of the Wimpy Boys, which is
Speaker 3: what that crew was called after the club that they
Speaker 3: hung out in, doing all those things that those guys
Speaker 3: were doing, and it became a key and very close
Speaker 3: member of Scarpus crew.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Gregory Scarpa Junior and his introduction to
Speaker 2: the life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Gregory. You know, he grew up like a lot
Speaker 3: of kids, idolizing his dad, and his dad did things
Speaker 3: with Gregory to, you know, try to do the father
Speaker 3: son sorts of things. Taught him some things about sports,
Speaker 3: tried to make sure that he stayed in school. Was
Speaker 3: very insistent on attendance at school. But Gregory got into
Speaker 3: a fight with when he was in high school, got
Speaker 3: in a fight with another classmate and he came home
Speaker 3: and he had a big lump on his forehead and
Speaker 3: his father was asking him about it, and greg said,
Speaker 3: Gregory Junior said, it's no big deal, dad, it was
Speaker 3: a fair fight. He got a good lick in. They
Speaker 3: exchanged some words and eventually Greig the father told greg Junior,
Speaker 3: you go back to school tomorrow and if you don't
Speaker 3: put that kid in the hospital, don't bother coming home.
Speaker 3: And that happened. Of course, greg Junior got expelled. And
Speaker 3: this was a kid who was he was a tough kid,
Speaker 3: good with his hands. He was a golden glove boxer,
Speaker 3: and at that point there weren't a whole lot of
Speaker 3: choices for him. And eventually he was brought within his
Speaker 3: father's orbit. In terms of the Colombo family, Gregory Senior
Speaker 3: introduced him to Joe Colombo. Eventually greg Junior became a
Speaker 3: member of the crew and a member himself, a good fellow.
Speaker 3: Then eventually Coppo. I think that the inflection point, the
Speaker 3: most important moment, was that moment when his father told him,
Speaker 3: don't come home if you don't put that kid in
Speaker 3: the hospital. Because at that point and he hoped for
Speaker 3: a non post and ustra life probably disappeared for Gregory.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's explain the Columbo family hierarchy in terms of
Speaker 2: Carmine Persico and his son Ali Boy.
Speaker 3: What is the situation you may recall Joe Colombo was
Speaker 3: there was an attempted assassination on Joe Colombo. He lived
Speaker 3: for another seven years, but he's incapacitated. So there was
Speaker 3: a vacuum at the top of the Columbo family leadership.
Speaker 3: Carmine Persico was approved as the essentially the street boss
Speaker 3: while Joe Columbo was still alive, and Carmine, a longtime
Speaker 3: member of the Colombo family, became the boss. And Carmine
Speaker 3: was in and out of prison, particularly in the early
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties, and even though he was in prison, he
Speaker 3: retained his title as the boss of the family, and
Speaker 3: that was very difficult. It's difficult to run something from
Speaker 3: a distance. But the Persco was interested in maintaining that
Speaker 3: position because the financial benefits of being the boss all
Speaker 3: they flow upward in the mafia, and whoever's at the top,
Speaker 3: that's where the money ends up, or a good deal
Speaker 3: of the money ends up. He had a brother, Alley Boy,
Speaker 3: and also a son, Little Alley Boy, who was named
Speaker 3: after his brother, who were also prominent members of still
Speaker 3: called the Columbo family, and so far as I know,
Speaker 3: it still referred to as the Columbo family. It didn't
Speaker 3: become the Persico family when Carmine took over the reins,
Speaker 3: but they facilitated and assisted his running of the family
Speaker 3: from prison. That fact that Carmen was running the family
Speaker 3: from prison really contributed a lot to the violence of
Speaker 3: the late nineteen eighties early nineteen nineties that was known
Speaker 3: as the Third Columbo War.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that he gives his FBI handler and by
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty it's a person named Lynn de Vecchio, and
Speaker 2: he's giving information not only on the opposing faction or
Speaker 2: Tana and his men, but also he's giving information regarding
Speaker 2: crimes and including murder attributed to Carmine Persico, doesn't he.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Lyndavecchio was a special agent for the FBI and
Speaker 3: he approached scarp in nineteen eighty looking to reopen Scarpa
Speaker 3: as a teci top echelon criminal informant. And Lynn was
Speaker 3: as I said, he was a special agent, and he
Speaker 3: was a guy who was interested in furthering his own career,
Speaker 3: and so he saw Scarpa as an informant as a
Speaker 3: possibility of doing that. While Lynn Devekia was getting information
Speaker 3: from Scarpa, Scarpa was giving him information about Carmine Persico
Speaker 3: and attributing at least eight murders to either Persco's orders
Speaker 3: or Persco's personally being involved in it. The bizarre thing
Speaker 3: is that, as you've picked up on when the family
Speaker 3: split into two different factions, the back vic Ana on
Speaker 3: the one hand, and then the faction that back Carmine Persico,
Speaker 3: the leader of the so called Persco faction was Greg Scarpa,
Speaker 3: or the most important person in that faction was Greg
Speaker 3: scar and they were referred to as the Persco Loyalists.
Speaker 3: But it's not even a stretch to say that a
Speaker 3: guy that's telling the FBI that this guy committed eight
Speaker 3: murders is not loyal to that guy. He was loyal
Speaker 3: to Greg Scarpa, and during that entire period he had
Speaker 3: no qualms about telling the FBI about potential violations of
Speaker 3: the law of PERSCO and others within the Columbo family
Speaker 3: were involved in. And you know, Dan just backing up
Speaker 3: a little. When I told you that Joe Colombo had
Speaker 3: Scarpa as one of his confidants, one of his closest members.
Speaker 3: Scarpa is the one who provided the information that made
Speaker 3: Joe Colombo Junior and Joe Columbo Seniors arrest possible. Having
Speaker 3: Greg Scarpa close to you in any sort of capacity
Speaker 3: was a dangerous proposition, and it certainly was for Carma
Speaker 3: and PERSCO in terms of his freedom.
Speaker 2: That Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about I guess the most shocking murders attributed
Speaker 2: to Greg Scarpa, and it's also these murders are demonstrative
Speaker 2: of Scarpa's unique murderous character. Let's talk about Mary Barry,
Speaker 2: her connection to Scarpa and the reason for her murder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's such a tragic story. It's just awful. She
Speaker 3: was involved with Ellie Boys, Scarpa's brother, Ellie Boy Persico,
Speaker 3: and very similar to the story between Scarpa and Linda.
Speaker 3: Ali Boy was about twice Mary's age when they met.
Speaker 3: She was his mistress for a number of years. Ali
Speaker 3: Boy ended up being the subject of prosecution. Was supposed
Speaker 3: to show up in court one day and that they
Speaker 3: just a flipped ended up. He was He went up
Speaker 3: to Connecticut where apparently the mafia had this sort of
Speaker 3: underground railroad to protect members that were on the run,
Speaker 3: on the lamb, however you want to style it. Mary
Speaker 3: was in a tight spot after that because she had
Speaker 3: hoped that the family would take care of her and
Speaker 3: continue to support her. At the same time, their rumors
Speaker 3: started floating around that Mary was talking to the FBI,
Speaker 3: that she was talking to local law enforcement, that she
Speaker 3: was doing this, she was doing that, and the assumption
Speaker 3: was that she was going to tell the FBI where
Speaker 3: Ali Boy Persco was. And the fact is that Ali
Speaker 3: Boy's family didn't even know where he was, and Mary
Speaker 3: certainly didn't know where he was. But this was during
Speaker 3: the time when Scarpa's handler was Lynda Vecchio, and Scarpa
Speaker 3: got the job of killing Mary, and Scarpa, in my view,
Speaker 3: was anxious to make sure that she was no longer
Speaker 3: alive because she was being used as an informant by
Speaker 3: the FBI. There's a bit that I found from a
Speaker 3: US Marshall who approached the FBI saying they wanted to
Speaker 3: talk to Mary about the possibility of finding Alley Boy,
Speaker 3: and the FBI's response was, we have a special relationship
Speaker 3: with Mary and we would rather not talk to her.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure exactly how Scarpa found that out. Wow,
Speaker 3: but I think the bit about they were worried that
Speaker 3: and Scarpa was worried about Mary telling them where Ali
Speaker 3: Boy was, to me is just complete nonsense. I mean,
Speaker 3: Scarpa was telling the FBI that Ali Boy's brother was
Speaker 3: committing all these murders. I don't think that Scarpa had
Speaker 3: any particular loyalty towards Alley Boy that were compel him
Speaker 3: to say, like, well, we've got to get rid of Mary.
Speaker 3: Mary was lured to a club owned by Carma and Sessa,
Speaker 3: and under the guise of saying they were going to
Speaker 3: offer her a job, and she needed a job, and
Speaker 3: when she got to the club, Gregory Junior eventually Tackler
Speaker 3: held her down while Gregor killed her. Just absolutely awful,
Speaker 3: so awful that even some of the mafia guys said,
Speaker 3: we're going to hell for this. Yeah, you know, Greg
Speaker 3: Senior at one point said, they give me these jobs
Speaker 3: because they know I have the stomach for it. That
Speaker 3: admission is just it's remarkable to be able to say
Speaker 3: that I have the stomach for killing this young, completely
Speaker 3: innocent girl.
Speaker 2: One more testament to Greg Scarpa's murderous intentions is someone
Speaker 2: he considered like a son, Joe Brewster. Briefly tell us
Speaker 2: about Joe Brewster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Joe and Greg went way back in the Profacci family.
Speaker 3: They've been friends for a long time. Joe was really charismatic,
Speaker 3: good looking guy who was not only a cold blood
Speaker 3: killer himself, but also a very skilled thief, very skilled
Speaker 3: at these bank burglaries that were mitting enormous amounts of money.
Speaker 3: Joe in the mid nineteen eighties was, in my view,
Speaker 3: was cutting Scarpa out of some of these jobs that
Speaker 3: he was doing. He wasn't giving Scarpa cut of the jobs,
Speaker 3: and Scarpa just for him that was pretty unforgivable. The
Speaker 3: stories were that Joe had his girlfriend who was born
Speaker 3: again Christian, Joe couldn't kill anymore, he wanted to get
Speaker 3: out of the life. And I think there's probably some
Speaker 3: truth to Joe having some doubts about what he was
Speaker 3: doing with his life. But this idea that he was
Speaker 3: killed because he couldn't really act like a mafia guy
Speaker 3: anymore because of this born again Christian girlfriend, I think
Speaker 3: are overstated. I think it's much more likely that Scarpa
Speaker 3: and other members of the mafia families decided that Joe
Speaker 3: had to go because he was acting on his own
Speaker 3: and he wasn't cutting in the right guys on the
Speaker 3: proceeds of these bank burglaries. So Scarpa asked for permission
Speaker 3: to kill him. And you need permission from like a
Speaker 3: higher up in the mafia to kill somebody else on
Speaker 3: the team, so to speak. He got that permission. His son,
Speaker 3: Greg Junior, is actually the guy who pulled the trigger
Speaker 3: and killed Joe, who is in the backseat of his
Speaker 3: car at the time. Again, this was a guy that
Speaker 3: for years scarp had talked about. He's like a son
Speaker 3: to me. They clearly had been very close best friends.
Speaker 3: He was the best man at Greg Scarpa Junior's wedding.
Speaker 3: In my view, because of those money issues, Greg Scarpa
Speaker 3: decided that's it. I'm not dealing with Joe anymore. And
Speaker 3: the way that Scarpa defaulted to the resolve of problem
Speaker 3: was with violence and often murder.
Speaker 2: Let's explain. Have you explained the manipulation that you talk
Speaker 2: about throughout that Scarpa has, the manipulation that he does
Speaker 2: with Lynn Delvecchio. What exactly is the nature of that manipulation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think at the core of it is de
Speaker 3: Vecchio's own wish to have a success for career at
Speaker 3: the FBI. You know, he's a guy who wants to
Speaker 3: be a big shot, and you know, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 3: with that, wanting to really advance in your own career.
Speaker 3: And I think Scarpa was smart enough. And this is
Speaker 3: the one of the unusual things, not unusual, but a
Speaker 3: little bit surprising that Scarpa, who barely had a high
Speaker 3: school education, was able to manipulate building full of people
Speaker 3: that had college educations and a lot of experience when
Speaker 3: ne Vecchio was an experienced special agent by the time
Speaker 3: he and Greg Scarpa hooked up together. But I think
Speaker 3: de Vecchio was somewhat fascinated with the mafia world, fascinated
Speaker 3: by Greg Scarpy. He says quite frankly that he considered
Speaker 3: Greg Scarpa to be his friend. And so I think
Speaker 3: there was a line that got blurred for de Vecchio
Speaker 3: in terms of that relationship, and I think Scarpa took
Speaker 3: full advantage of it. And I also think that that
Speaker 3: manipulations started really early on, back in the early sixties.
Speaker 3: And we see in the FBI documents time and again
Speaker 3: Will scarp It is testing things, saying what the FBI
Speaker 3: will do. For instance, when he first started working for them,
Speaker 3: he said, you know, I've got about three thousand dollars
Speaker 3: in debts and I'm thinking of getting out of the life.
Speaker 3: But if I had somehow I could pay off these
Speaker 3: this three thousand bucks, then I could really continue and
Speaker 3: give you guys everything you want. And this idea that
Speaker 3: Greg scarp at the age of thirty four thirty five,
Speaker 3: which is going to retire from the mafia and go
Speaker 3: do something else. Whatever that something else was, it was
Speaker 3: just preposterous. But the FBI didn't know that. They didn't
Speaker 3: know anything about how the mafia worked, and they ponied
Speaker 3: up the money. Scarpa did this time and again in
Speaker 3: his career, and the manipulation included a heating of information
Speaker 3: and misinformation or even not thorough information to his handlers,
Speaker 3: both Anthony Vallano and Lynda Vecchio, and I think that
Speaker 3: the impulse of the special agents to want to believe
Speaker 3: what scarp was telling them and use that for their
Speaker 3: own advancement purposes set them up for being way too
Speaker 3: credulous about whatever scarp was saying. And Dan we see
Speaker 3: this time and again in the FBI documents that scarp
Speaker 3: is considered to be reliable. His information is considered to
Speaker 3: be singular, so they're not getting it from any other source,
Speaker 3: and that he is emotionally stable. Just bizarre in retrospect,
Speaker 3: but we do see that in the FBI files, and
Speaker 3: I think that that's part of that is is explained
Speaker 3: by the desire of members of the FBI to have
Speaker 3: this really high prized informant providing them with information that
Speaker 3: leads them to other things, other arrests, other convictions, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now, let's fast forward a little bit or
Speaker 2: quite a bit to the diagnosis of Greg Scarpa as
Speaker 2: having a deadly illness, How that occurs, what is the
Speaker 2: illness that gets him into the hospital in the first place,
Speaker 2: And then tell us about the ongoing information about the
Speaker 2: Third Columbo War. What exactly information is Greg Scarpa feeding
Speaker 2: del Vecchio while at the same time he's on the
Speaker 2: most prestigious hit team along with Larry Maza and and
Speaker 2: a person named del Masto. Tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Greg Scarpa was a lifelong smoker and a scotch drinker.
Speaker 3: I mean, he wasn't an alcoholic, but he liked having
Speaker 3: scotch with his dinners. And he'd also have been popping
Speaker 3: asphen due to some back problems that he'd have. In
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty six, his stomach essentially just started bleeding. In
Speaker 3: a layman's terms, it kind of exploded and he was
Speaker 3: in very serious condition. He needed surgery right away, three
Speaker 3: different surgeries, and as part of that surgery he needed
Speaker 3: blood transfusions too. Scarpa, this is the kind of the
Speaker 3: height of the aide scares, or we're called dan. There
Speaker 3: was a lot of misinformation about what was going on.
Speaker 3: People weren't really sure what was going on in hospitals,
Speaker 3: and Scarpa didn't trust the blood supply at the hospital
Speaker 3: that he was being where he was being operated on,
Speaker 3: So he told his crew to come down and they
Speaker 3: would get tested to see if any of them were
Speaker 3: a match, and a few of them were in One
Speaker 3: of them was not only a match, but was unknown
Speaker 3: to everyone he was HIV positive. He was a weightlifter
Speaker 3: who was using steroids and injecting himself with steroids, and
Speaker 3: that's probably how he got HIV became HIV positive. That
Speaker 3: blood gets transferred, transfused into Scarpa during these one of
Speaker 3: these operations, and as a result Scarpa he gets the
Speaker 3: stomach matter fixed, most of his stomach is removed, but
Speaker 3: now he's HIV positive again. This is nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: and he lives for another eight years, which is way
Speaker 3: beyond what anybody thought he would live at the time.
Speaker 3: I mean, there was no real treatment for aids at
Speaker 3: the time. There is certainly a reasonable argument that during
Speaker 3: the Third Columba War from about nineteen ninety two through
Speaker 3: the end of nineteen ninety three, Scarpa, who was by
Speaker 3: then experiencing full blown AIDS, had this attitude of I've
Speaker 3: already got this death sentence, there's nothing to stop me,
Speaker 3: there are no rails anymore, and so I'm just going
Speaker 3: to do whatever I want. And certainly some of his
Speaker 3: activities during the Third Club of War back up that conclusion.
Speaker 2: Well, tell us about this vengeful and murderous campaign he
Speaker 2: goes on despite this, He's going to die.
Speaker 3: These two factions that I talked about earlier that were
Speaker 3: trying to fill the void of the leadership caused by
Speaker 3: Carmin Persco's imprisonment, and he was Carmin Persco at this
Speaker 3: point was going to die in prison. He wasn't going
Speaker 3: to get out right. Pick Arena, who was a coppo
Speaker 3: in the family, had been appointed acting boss, and Arena
Speaker 3: wanted to become the boss, not just acting boss. And
Speaker 3: you know, he was trying to feather his own nest,
Speaker 3: and that didn't sit well with a lot of members
Speaker 3: who were considered themselves Carmine Perscal loyalists. Didn't set well
Speaker 3: with Scarpa because it meant that the best hits, the
Speaker 3: best money, the best gigs would be going to Arena
Speaker 3: and the people that were close to Arena in Queens,
Speaker 3: which is where Arena was based. A lot of guys
Speaker 3: in Queens were getting their buttons, were getting made into
Speaker 3: good fellows. Not so many in Brooklyn. There was this
Speaker 3: tension and they tried to resolve it through a number
Speaker 3: of different meetings. There was no resolution, there was and
Speaker 3: what happened was a shooting war on the streets of
Speaker 3: Brooklyn where Scarpa and two very close confederates, Larry Mas
Speaker 3: and Jimmy Delmasto, were hunting the streets of Brooklyn for
Speaker 3: members that were loyal to vic Arena. And there were
Speaker 3: some just gruesome murders that were involved in as a
Speaker 3: result of that, and three of the murders that happened
Speaker 3: during that period, of the murders that eventually Scarpa confessed
Speaker 3: to in federal court.
Speaker 2: Eventually Great Scarpa goes to jail, he's arrested. He goes
Speaker 2: to jail and has to deal with this illness. How
Speaker 2: does the state deal with this illness?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well he got sort of a break on that
Speaker 3: one because the plea bargain was that he was going
Speaker 3: to admit to these three murders and that he was
Speaker 3: going to get a life sentence but the judge decided
Speaker 3: to give him a ten year sentence instead because Scarpa
Speaker 3: was pretty far in to full blown AIDS by then,
Speaker 3: and the judge knew that if he gave him a
Speaker 3: life sentence, Scarper would not be eligible for special medical care,
Speaker 3: so he gave him a ten year sentence instead, which
Speaker 3: really blew a lot of people away. They were very
Speaker 3: bitter about it. Here's a guy I've been committing murder
Speaker 3: for years and years and years, finally had been at
Speaker 3: only three of those murders and he gets a ten
Speaker 3: year sentence. Well, it was going to be a life
Speaker 3: sentence anyway, because he wasn't going to live much longer.
Speaker 3: During this period where scarp is supposed to be, first
Speaker 3: he's in state court, that he's in federal court. He's
Speaker 3: being incarcerated in a state institution of Rikers Island, and
Speaker 3: then eventually he's going to be transferred to a federal institution.
Speaker 3: He's getting treatment for the fact that, and it's really
Speaker 3: palliative treatment, trying to make his life a little more
Speaker 3: comfortable while he's in these various states of incarceration. Eventually
Speaker 3: he's transferred to a federal hospital in Rochester Minnesota, and
Speaker 3: a Scarpet, even in the last months of his life,
Speaker 3: is hoping that he can go home and die at home,
Speaker 3: and that request is routinely denied by some judges who
Speaker 3: just they pretty much had enough of Greg Scarpet. So
Speaker 3: he died in a prison hospital in June of nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety four from complications from AIDS.
Speaker 2: You write that Linda Siro Linda Diana former stayed with
Speaker 2: him right to the very end, cared for him when
Speaker 2: he was at home, stayed with him to the very end. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. In fact, she not just stayed with him at home,
Speaker 3: but also cared for him when he was in these
Speaker 3: various either when various prisons, jails, these various caregiving institutions
Speaker 3: that he was going to live out his sentence, and
Speaker 3: so she was absolutely loyal to him right to the
Speaker 3: very end. And she had as thorough a perspective about
Speaker 3: who Scarpe was as anybody. And one of the things
Speaker 3: that's interesting about that is that Scarpa was asked once
Speaker 3: again if he could die at home while he was
Speaker 3: in Rochester, Minnesota, and he was down to about eighty
Speaker 3: pounds or so very very frail that he was in
Speaker 3: bed all the time, and there was a hearing on
Speaker 3: that request, and somebody at the hearing I think it
Speaker 3: was a probation officer or or no, maybe he's a prosecutor.
Speaker 3: Excuse me. Prosecutor asked the medical professional who was testimony,
Speaker 3: and he said, does this bigger finger still work? And
Speaker 3: the answer was yes. And so they denied his request
Speaker 3: to die at home. And at first Linda's response was
Speaker 3: this is ridiculous. He's living in bed, he's completely incapacitated.
Speaker 3: And then she said she thought for a minute and thought,
Speaker 3: you know, but they're right. If Craig went home, he
Speaker 3: just might kill someone. And so right to the end
Speaker 3: she was loyal to him, and right to the end,
Speaker 3: Scarpa had the capacity, in her view, to commit murder.
Speaker 2: What of de Vecchio and the FBI, What was their
Speaker 2: talk of the Vecchio knowing that Scarpa was murdering and
Speaker 2: still petitioned for him to be reopened as a informant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that happened during the Third Columba War and towards
Speaker 3: the end and when scarp was about to be arrested
Speaker 3: and incarcerated and Linda Vecchio, when scarp was closed, Lindevechio
Speaker 3: petitioned for him to be reopened, and the FBI did
Speaker 3: reopen him briefly as an informant. De Vecchio in his
Speaker 3: own book said in My Heart of Hearts, I knew
Speaker 3: that scarp was still doing hits. And he doesn't really
Speaker 3: put a time frame on that in terms of when
Speaker 3: he knew that. But there in the documents there are
Speaker 3: a lot of questions arise. For example, when Scarpa the
Speaker 3: day after Joe Brewster was killed on Scarpa's orders, he
Speaker 3: reports that de Vecchio that Joe Brewster was killed, and
Speaker 3: he uses the passive voice, or at least that's how
Speaker 3: it comes out in the notes on the debriefing in
Speaker 3: the FBI documents, and there's there's nothing in that particular
Speaker 3: debriefing of de Vecchio saying, well, well, Greg, who killed
Speaker 3: him and why was he killed? And and there are
Speaker 3: plenty of times when Scarpa was very specific about so
Speaker 3: and so was killed, this guy killed him, that guy
Speaker 3: killed him, and we see that time and again in
Speaker 3: the documents. But with the Brewster killing, we don't see that.
Speaker 3: And either he said it and it never got recorded,
Speaker 3: or de Vecchio was not interested in knowing who it
Speaker 3: was that killed Joe Brewster because they had an inkling
Speaker 3: of who that might be. Now in de vechio defense,
Speaker 3: he later was charged with providing Scarpa with information that
Speaker 3: led to some murders, and that was tried in state court.
Speaker 3: And in the middle of the trial, when Linda Sharrow
Speaker 3: was about to started to testify, a reporter that had
Speaker 3: interviewed Linda a number of years earlier let the court
Speaker 3: know that what she was saying on the stand was
Speaker 3: completely different from what she had said earlier, and at
Speaker 3: that point the prosecution felt that their case had fallen apart.
Speaker 3: They moved to dismiss the case, and the case was dismissed,
Speaker 3: and as a matter of law, that meant that Linda
Speaker 3: Vecchio could not be charged with and tried for any
Speaker 3: of that, and in fact it acts as what's called
Speaker 3: race judicata. The thing has been adjudicated. Linda Ki can
Speaker 3: rightly say that that matter came before court. The result
Speaker 3: of that was that essentially, I'm not guilty. So there
Speaker 3: were certainly rumblings, and enough rumblings that the Brooklyn District
Speaker 3: Attorney decided to bring a criminal case, But that criminal
Speaker 3: case did not result in a conviction of agent of Akio.
Speaker 2: Very very interesting. In the end, tell us the fate
Speaker 2: of Greg Scarpa Junior and also some of the people
Speaker 2: you spoke to for this book that were involved with
Speaker 2: the family, Linda and Lil Linda, tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Greig Scarpa Junior got out of prison a few
Speaker 3: years back on a compassionate release. He spent thirty three
Speaker 3: years in federal prison. Four of them were in solitary,
Speaker 3: and while he was in federal prism, he washed his
Speaker 3: hands of the family. He talked about his own regret
Speaker 3: and I think it's I think it's legiti. I think
Speaker 3: your heart felt what he said about regretting the pain
Speaker 3: that he caused, regretting having been in that life. I
Speaker 3: didn't want anything to do with the family. His father
Speaker 3: essentially cut him off while he was in prison and
Speaker 3: told other people don't talk to Greg Greg Jr. He's
Speaker 3: been out for a while. I talked to him on
Speaker 3: the phone. I also sent him some questions to answer
Speaker 3: Greg's story. To a certain extent, it was told by
Speaker 3: Sandra Harmon in her book. Although Greg said that the
Speaker 3: book is sensational and not accurate, and I tried to
Speaker 3: figure out where the inaccuracies were, and I detail all
Speaker 3: of that in the end notes of the book and
Speaker 3: sometimes in the text too. So Greg is out, he's living.
Speaker 3: My understanding is he's living with his sister. He's also
Speaker 3: done some interviews online about his life and his life
Speaker 3: as a a member of the Columbo crime family. Larry
Speaker 3: mass I mentioned earlier, was someone that whose life story
Speaker 3: in terms of spec scripts Joe Pluto and I had
Speaker 3: been working on. Larry did his ten years in prison
Speaker 3: and he got out. He's a successful businessman, and he
Speaker 3: also has sat for a number of interviews. People are
Speaker 3: very interested about his life in the mafia, what that
Speaker 3: was about, and Larry very candid about it about about
Speaker 3: his life. And Larry and I had some conversations, and
Speaker 3: I have not talked to Linda Chyrol. Little Linda, her daughter,
Speaker 3: that's my understanding, was involved in a movie that's been
Speaker 3: made by Mark Wahlberg, starring as Craig Scarpa in a
Speaker 3: dramatic rendition of Scarpa's involvement on the Vernon Dahmer case
Speaker 3: by in nineteen sixty six. And my understanding is that
Speaker 3: little Linda has been involved in that process and maybe
Speaker 3: advising on the film. But I haven't talked to them, Dan.
Speaker 3: Most of the research I did was tracking down documents
Speaker 3: speak online, tracking down court documents, tracking down of course,
Speaker 3: the FBI documents, not just the scarpet documents, but also
Speaker 3: the periscope documents and the Mississippi burning documents. Lots and
Speaker 3: lots of documents, newspaper articles, interviews, books, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just wanted to comment. It seems like I'm
Speaker 2: a big fan of the Sopranos, and of course I've
Speaker 2: watched all the famous mob movies, but especially the Sopranos
Speaker 2: I saw many of It seemed like these same stories
Speaker 2: woven into the Sopranos storylines in many episodes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that to a certain extent, these stories
Speaker 3: are fairly generic with respect to the mafia and the
Speaker 3: way they operate, and so on a certain level, it's
Speaker 3: almost like, you know, you can pull one name out
Speaker 3: and put another name in, and it's likely that they
Speaker 3: were doing the same sorts of things. For people that
Speaker 3: study them mafia know a lot about the Mafia. It
Speaker 3: wouldn't be any surprise that, Okay, these guys in Buffalo
Speaker 3: were involved in bone sharking, gambling, numbers, hijacking, burglary is extortion,
Speaker 3: because that's what these guys do. They do it in
Speaker 3: New York, they do it in Kansas City, they do
Speaker 3: it in Buffalo, they do it wherever they are. And
Speaker 3: so I think that there's a certain identity that can
Speaker 3: be seen throughout these various stories, even the fictionalized ones,
Speaker 3: as you indicate it, like the Sopranos, that would ring
Speaker 3: true to anybody that knew about how the mafia operates.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you for coming on and talking
Speaker 2: about your truly extraordinary Greg scarpa legendary evil, the many
Speaker 2: faces of a mafia killer. For those people that want
Speaker 2: to find out more about this book, do you have
Speaker 2: a website or do any social media?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a website Jonathan dyerauthor dot com. People
Speaker 3: can contact me on there and I will respond to them,
Speaker 3: and it has a lot of information about this book
Speaker 3: and the other books I've written. There's obviously an Amazon
Speaker 3: listing that has a fair amount of information. I'm on
Speaker 3: some social media. I'm on Blue Sky, on Instagram, I'm
Speaker 3: on book bub, I'm on I'm not on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 3: I was on Twitter a number of years ago, but
Speaker 3: it seemed like everybody on there was really angry about something. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I got off Twitter, but yeah, I'm on a
Speaker 3: smattering of social media and I have a website. Publisher.
Speaker 3: While getting pressed, can also take any sorts of inquiries
Speaker 3: that people might have about about the book about me
Speaker 3: and for this to.
Speaker 2: Me, Thank you very much, Jonathan P. Dyer for Greg
Speaker 2: scarpa legendary evil, the many faces of a mafia killer.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for this interview, and you have
Speaker 2: a great evening, and good night.
Speaker 3: Same to you, Dan, and thanks very much for having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you, good night,